Bot Reviews: Transformers: Legacy Evolution Core Grimlock

It’s been awhile since I got a chance to snag any of the mini-Dinobots being used to build Volcanicus, and wouldn’t you know it, three of them dropped at once, so that’s the next few weeks sorted over here. And lo and behold, the first of the newest bunch is Grimlock, the Dinobot leader himself.

Unlike the rest of his team, Grimlock hasn’t been hurting for characterization in the many years since he made his debut, even when there’s been a split between “he’s actually a caveman,” and “he’s a bot of normal intelligence who’s a bit of a brute, and also speaks like a caveman.” It’s helped that, no matter who’s on the Dinobot roster each time they show up, he’s always there, and will sometimes just exist on his own. That’s the primordial power of a robot T-Rex, I suppose. Anywho, let’s look at the guy.

Robot Mode

Grimlock’s got a bit of that Legacy Sludge thing going on where there was an attempt to imitate the sculpting of his classic design, but the needs of the transformation engineering left him distorted and warped. You can see on him where they tried to match his cartoon model, on his chest, legs, arms, and hips, but it’s washed out by limbs that are a lot blockier, and with transformation seams cutting the details up. For example, he has his usual chest panel sculpted in (with the autobrand in the middle), but the colors and sculpting are cut up by two joints used to fold his arms in.

There’s a big difference compared to Sludge here, and it’s that he actually still looks good. Instead of looking odd and distorted, he’s instead kind of chibified. His limbs are thick, bricky, and stompy, and it comes off looking a little bit adorable. He wears his weirdness well.

Around back, he’s a bit less good-looking, with his lower legs being straight-up hollow, and his usual back kibble being particularly messy. The instructions tell you to rotate the “wings” made up of his T-rex torso so they’re pointing downwards, but I like rotating them on their balljoints so they’re behind his head, like the wings he usually has (and that’s how designer Evan Brooks placed them on his Instagram)

Uptop, Grimlock continues the Legacy Dinobot tradition of just nailing the headsculpt. That’s him, that’s Grimlock’s featureless helmet and visor, with the slight suggestion of a jaw around his mouthplate.

I guess this is what happens when you’re also making giant Studio Series 86 versions that you can just compress down to this scale. I’d also like to point out that, thanks to his exaggerated proportions, each of his fists is about double the size of his head, which just feels like a metaphor for the character.

The Default Dinobot Colors are on full display here, say it with me: Grey, Gold, Red, Black, and Silver. This time around, there’s a lot less red and black, and a lot more gray, and it’s really not laid out like his usual colors (in particular, his red briefs and black thighs are both just solid gray here), further obscuring his attempted animation-accuracy.

Somehow, though, it doesn’t look too plain on him. I guess they picked a good shade of gray. Oh, he’s also got a cartoon-style blue visor beneath his helmet, and on my copy, they just slopped that paint everywhere (including the back of his head somehow!). Thankfully Gundam markers are a thing.

Despite those hollow legs, Grimlock has the same sturdy, bricky-feeling construction as Legacy Slug, even if he’s not quite at Sludge levels. I guess when you’re part of a combiner, they make extra sure that you’ve got density to you. They also made sure that, despite his hollow legs, he had enough of a footprint that he can stand just fine unassisted.

I’m pretty much convinced that none of the Core Dinobots are going to have elbow articulation, if only because we’re on figure number three to omit it (Spoiler alert: I was wrong about this). The funnier thing is that, because of his transformation, he manages to have wrist swivels, despite missing a basic staple. Still, outside of that, he’s got a pretty good level of Core-class articulation (a swivel neck, ball-jointed shoulders, those wrist swivels, a waist swivel, ball-jointed hips and knees), so he’s sufficiently expressive.

Grimlock’s got the same sort of accessory that Slug did, a big, thick, double-barreled gun made up of part of his tail.

On one hand, it’s actually sculpted to resemble the gun the original Grimlock came with, as opposed to being made up. On the other hand, it’s cast in solid gray, and doesn’t have a weapons port on it, like Slug’s did.

Speaking of that, Grimlock actually has some 5MM accessory compatibility, but it’s in odd places: He’s got two ports on his shins, and you can flip up a peg meant for his combiner mode above his head. Still, there’s some stuff you can create with these connections.

Transformation

I’m glad to see the twin trends of “a really simple, quick, fun transformation” and “it’s just a riff on the G1 transformation” continue here with Grimlock. You just flip up his backpack, close it around his head, rotate his wrists, fold up his legs into his back, plug in his tail, and you’re done.

If nothing else, I enjoy flipping him back and forth between modes.

T-Rex Mode

Man. I saw the pictures in advance of getting this, so I knew this T-rex mode had some wonkiness going on, but I sort of thought it would be lessened in person, like with Sludge. But nope, he has some really big, bad, obvious problems here.

Okay, let’s start with what I like: He’s got a really nice headsculpt again. Specifically, they did a great job of hitting his kind of gormless, oddly adorably cartoon-style T-rex head. This is a guy who really wants to hear Kup tell war stories.

And while they’re completely immobile, I love the sculpting on his funny T-Rex arms, and the torso beneath them.

So, beyond that, there’s two very large issues, that can’t be ignored. One: Thanks to the ball-joints present on the two panels that make up his torso, he’s got a pair of giant orbs on either side of his neck. No attempt was made to hide them, they’re just out there, being very obvious, disrupting his shape.

And disrupting it even worse is his folded-up robot mode legs forming his back and tail, because they just create this gigantic backpack, tapering down into a thick, stumpy tail. Like, he almost looks like he’s got a turtle shell on his back.

There’s no way around it, it just doesn’t look good. Maybe if you pretended he was some kinda weird Kaiju instead of a T-Rex, it would work (and he’s already the old-fashioned discredited standing-up version of one, so he’s sort of halfway there), but as it stands, he just looks really awkward, compromised, and dumpy. At least the first two dinos managed to have normal-ish altmodes.

And, like, we’ve seen small, simplified takes on G1 Grimlock before, starting with his Classic Pretender/Legends design in 1989, and ending with the recently-released Authentics, and they’ve all managed decent T-rex modes.

This really comes down to the needs of him being a combiner, I think. Certainly, his neck-balls are the result of needing ball joints to make those panels move in more than one way, otherwise they’d just be pinned.

On the positive side, he’s still decently well painted, with a bit of silver on his rex arms, and his oddly cute face being enhanced with a pair of baby-blue eyes.

His articulation’s pretty basic, not that he really needs much. His arms are immobile (which is fine, it’s not like he can use them for much), his legs are articulated at his hips. What’s really surprising is that his head can move up and down, and you’d think this would support him also having a modern T-rex configuration.

But, while you can get him into a low-to-the-ground position, his gigantic back end immediately causes stability issues, making him keel over backwards if he’s in any pose other than straight-up, or the Jack-O Pose.

At least he’s got two 5-millimeter ports on that giant tail, so you can like, arm him up.

Combined Mode

Here we go, the reason the whole thing’s so compromised.

Funny enough, you’re basically wadding him up into a cube in this mode, like a 52 Toys Beastbox.

And before combining him, he looks kind of amusing, with his Rex head peaking out from behind his forelegs, looking like he’s scrunched himself up. Well, until you kind of awkwardly cover half of it with one of his wings/rex torso flaps. There’s also no stated place to stash his weapon, but you can peg it onto the back of the cube to act as an additional heel spur.

Like, I’m not a toy designer, so I’m probably extremely out of pocket, but surely the T-Rex flaws weren’t needed in light of what they’re used for here? Only one of those torso flaps needs to move in a way that calls for a ball joint, and I’m unclear on why exactly it needs to move there, and not stay flat like the other one. Meanwhile, the purpose of the Gigantic Back End seems to be to give him a really solid heel spur, but…you can just use the tail-gun to give him one? There’s probably some other factor I’m not realizing, though

So, you can plug this guy snugly into the left hip of the Volcanicus Torso, or rather, the left knee. Because it turns out, this cube is his entire lower leg, and the combined robot is a lot stumpier than I was expecting, which is kind of a shame. I’d thought for awhile that maybe Snarl would come with some old-fashioned foot-pads to enhance his height, but as of this writing, that doesn’t seem to be the case. He kinda-sorta has a pair of five-millimeter ports at the back of his foot, though (they’re both half-moons), so maybe adding something in via weaponizer parts is possible, if a bit tricky. Still, I’ll reserve my judgement until I’ve assembled the full combiner.

Overall

I’m ragging on this guy a lot, but he’s not without his charms. I do like his robot mode, and there’s an adorableness to his awkward, funky-looking Rex mode. He’s also got a nice, smooth, fun transformation, and I genuinely like flipping him back and forth.  But it’s hard not to look at all the compromises they made for his combined form, and wish they’d found a different way to do it. I’d accepted from the jump that engineering a full combiner at this scale would mean compromised solo components, but Snarl and Slug had managed to keep those compromises to their robot modes, and not the all-important Dino modes. So, it’s hard to recommend this guy unless a) you want to finish the combiner or b) you find his obvious flaws appealing, so long as you recognize that what you’re seeing in the pictures is genuinely what you get.

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